Geez!!.. 512 mb ram on idle?!?!

  • Thread starter Thread starter zaxon
  • Start date Start date
Z

zaxon

Is it just my system or this creep really gets 512 mb on idle..
I mean.. nothing is on here..
MSN live starts by default..
CA antivirus also..
thats it..

512 mb ON IDLE!!!..OMG!!

zaxon
 
zaxon said:
Is it just my system or this creep really gets 512 mb on idle..
I mean.. nothing is on here..
MSN live starts by default..
CA antivirus also..
thats it..

512 mb ON IDLE!!!..OMG!!

zaxon
Click to expand...

Look at your Performance and Process tabs of Task Manager and you will
see that an amount of your memory is actually just reserved for cache
etc. This is released as needed for applications.
You can all the individual memory footprints of the other system
components too and they will not add up to 512MB.
 
This is why 1GB is recommended. All my Vista systems are using around 512MB
on idle.
 
I am no computer expert here...
But as far as i know cache means preloaded (i might be sooo wrong tho..)
And that means used right?..
I mean that 512 MB is FULL of something.. right?

if not.. its there already.. why you want to reserve some?..
as memory..

if i make no sence on computer side..
just ignore me :)
 
zaxon said:
I am no computer expert here...
But as far as i know cache means preloaded (i might be sooo wrong
tho..)
And that means used right?..
I mean that 512 MB is FULL of something.. right?

if not.. its there already.. why you want to reserve some?..
as memory..

if i make no sence on computer side..
just ignore me :)
Click to expand...

No - the cache that you see in Task Manager on the performance tab is
just reserve memory that Windows can use. So it appears to be used,
but it is dynamic and will be given back to processes that require
more physical memory.
Just looking at the memory available is not a good judge of how your
system is doing. You need to factor in the memory used by the
individual processes etc.
Turn on all the columns in Task Manager ... Processes to see the real
memory utilisation of the processes.
 
Maybe this is or could construed to be a 'typical' (I use the word
loosely) response by experienced Windows users?

In the good ol' days high indicators usually followed by a slow down on
the computer eg: 100% hits on CPU(s).

But something tells me that the figures should not be interpreted as for
earlier versions of Windows.

Vista seems to do stuff swiftly and with vigour so I'd guess that
interpreting the values also needs a phase shift?


If so, comparing performance figures with earlier flavours of Windows is
not really a good idea.

On a 3 Gig of Ram system Vista claims about a full Gig but in either 32
bit or 64 bit it runs swift, fast and efficiently on this 'pooter.

Even when completing a scan Vista tends to respond quite swiftly on my
AMD duo system.
 
Mike Brannigan said:
Look at your Performance and Process tabs of Task Manager and you will see
that an amount of your memory is actually just reserved for cache etc.
This is released as needed for applications.
You can all the individual memory footprints of the other system
components too and they will not add up to 512MB.
Click to expand...

If that's true, then Vista wouldn't need 512MB of memory to run, right?

So, let's do a simple test:
Take an ordinary workstation workload that consists of a web browser viewing
a single web page, a typical email client and news reader, a couple
instances of wordpad, a couple calculators, a couple command prompts, an
instance of Windows Explorer, and an mp3 player. This workload runs (slowly)
on Windows 2000 on a typical six-year-old machine with 64MB memory. With
128MB memory, it runs fine; switching among the programs, loading new
messages and new web pages, browsing through the filesystem, etc all
functions at a reasonable speed (i.e. it's not so slow that it makes you
lose your train of thought while you wait) with 128MB.

Is Vista's memory usage bloated compared to Windows 2000? To answer this
question, simply answer: can Vista run the above workload with 128MB with
the same acceptable performance which Windows 2000 provides?

Perhaps you'll make the argument that Vista is more feature-rich than
Windows 2000, and so justifiably needs more memory. Ok; let's turn off
Vista's firewall, windows defender, windows automatic update, system
restore, the search indexer, aero, fast user switching, and whatever other
new (relative to Windows 2000) features which might be consuming memory, and
ask the question again: can Vista run the above workload with 128MB with the
same acceptable performance which Windows 2000 provides?

And if the answer is "Vista requires at least 512MB memory, and that's not
negotiable," well then, wouldn't that be conclusive proof that Vista's
memory usage is, in fact, bloated compared to Windows 2000?
 
Vista caches alot of shit to RAM! the more ram u have the faster it will
load stuff! i have 4GB RAM, and at idle it uses about 1gb to 1.1gb . I
noticed the program file folders are cached to ram! its awesome!

stop bitching about high use of ram and buy more! its cheap! ppl still live
in the stone age!
 
I prefer Mark Minasi's advice: If you turn on the machine and the lights
don't dim, add more ram.
 
Vista is not "bloated" - it's "different". As has been discussed here
several times before, Vista will cache a lot more OS data, DLL files, etc.
when compared to previous versions of Windows. It will release the memory
used by cached and preloaded components if that memory is needed by another
program or process.

So leave it as it is, it is happy and you should be too. :-)

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
 
Agree completely with Richard here, ignore the memory management of Windows
XP - Vista's actually works well. On boot on my 2GB machine I have 30%
already used (well in-between 27% and 35%) yet I can open 10 programs and it
only reaches 50% usage. It's excellent. If I load a big memory using game
too it works well and redistributes it memory usage properly.

--
Byron Hinson
ActiveWin Windows Site: http://www.activewin.com


Richard G. Harper said:
Vista is not "bloated" - it's "different". As has been discussed here
several times before, Vista will cache a lot more OS data, DLL files, etc.
when compared to previous versions of Windows. It will release the memory
used by cached and preloaded components if that memory is needed by
another program or process.

So leave it as it is, it is happy and you should be too. :-)

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


And if the answer is "Vista requires at least 512MB memory, and that's
not negotiable," well then, wouldn't that be conclusive proof that
Vista's memory usage is, in fact, bloated compared to Windows 2000?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Is it just my system or this creep really gets 512 mb on idle..
I mean.. nothing is on here..
MSN live starts by default..
CA antivirus also..
thats it..

512 mb ON IDLE!!!..OMG!!
Click to expand...

With no programs running and at idle this system with Vista Ultimate RTM is
using about 380 MB. Currently with Windows Mail, Corel WordPerfiect Office
12 and Internet Explorer open it's at 408 MB. This is less than any of the
pre RTM versions. Others have seem a decrease in used RAM with RTM.
 
Exactly. I'm running on this laptop with 2GB right now, and it's at about
980 MB. Get XP using that much RAM and for me XP crawls. Vista is just
flying along though. I can flip between any of the apps that I have open
right now - Mail (with tons of NGs open), Word 2007, several explorer
windows, WMP, IE, etc, and it flips through them quickly. Opening up more
programs is quick too - even media center. On my system with 1 GB, it often
runs around 800 MB used, but does not slow down. I have an identical system
on XP with 1 GB RAM, and when it gets up to 800MB, it's a dog.

Vista was designed to take advantage of the RAM in your system and actually
use it. Personally, I'd rather have 1.8 GB out of 2 GB being used for
something useful, than have it wasted - if using it doesn't mean it slows
down my computer. And with Vista, it doesn't slow it down. It also means
if I give it more RAM, it might actually run even faster.

Rich
MVP - Directory Services
 
True, true...

What's the point of having all that RAM there to be sitting doing nothing?

It may as well be used and end up all the swifter an OS for doing so?
 
Not exactly a fair comparison.

Much RAM did the average PC have back when 2000 was the mainstream OS,
compared with today? Vista isn't intended for 6+ year old machines.
 
Probably because the last of the debugging code is gone along with some
related processes.
 
Richard G. Harper said:
Vista is not "bloated" - it's "different". As has been discussed here
several times before, Vista will cache a lot more OS data, DLL files, etc.
when compared to previous versions of Windows. It will release the memory
used by cached and preloaded components if that memory is needed by
another program or process.
Click to expand...

I understand that. And with that in mind, Vista with X amount of memory
should generally be faster than w2k with X amount of memory, for any value
of X, right? (Assuming that any new potential memory hogs such as Vista's
firewall, windows defender, windows automatic update, system restore, the
search indexer, aero, fast user switching, etc are turned off, in order to
make the comparison fair.)

If X is decreased, then Vista can't cache as much, so it will generally be
slower than it would be with higher X. Of course.
But my point is that _for a given value of X_, if Vista runs abysmally slow
(or not at all) while w2k runs fine, then Vista is indisputably bloated
compared to w2k.

If Vista's performance improves faster than w2k's performance improves as
main memory is increased from some baseline (e.g. 512MB), then perhaps
Vista's caching can justifiably take the credit.
But if Vista's performance declines faster than w2k's performance declines
as main memory is decreased from the baseline, then what takes the blame?
 
zaxon said:
Is it just my system or this creep really gets 512 mb on idle..
I mean.. nothing is on here..
MSN live starts by default..
CA antivirus also..
thats it..

512 mb ON IDLE!!!..OMG!!
Click to expand...

After booting, mine is around 500 meg also, but goes down after some time.
I'm currently at 345 mb with IE7, Mail (obviously) and WMP 11 streaming a
radio station.

Mike
 
Yup. Fully agree. Vista handles memory differently than any previous version
of Windows. Does it work? Uh... yeah?

Lang

Richard G. Harper said:
Vista is not "bloated" - it's "different". As has been discussed here
several times before, Vista will cache a lot more OS data, DLL files, etc.
when compared to previous versions of Windows. It will release the memory
used by cached and preloaded components if that memory is needed by
another program or process.

So leave it as it is, it is happy and you should be too. :-)

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


And if the answer is "Vista requires at least 512MB memory, and that's
not negotiable," well then, wouldn't that be conclusive proof that
Vista's memory usage is, in fact, bloated compared to Windows 2000?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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